Quote Originally Posted by handrawn View Post
I'm guessing the initial initial promises were made before Xara had decided [or firmed up] the decision to remove the Magix encumbrance; said encumbrance may in practice actually have hindered/prevented them fulfilling what they initially promised
As I understand, Xara took a decision with 3m of VC investment to 'venture' into a new market; farmed out the marketing and support for its then current generation of products to Magix. Xara only has circa 40 heads and its priorities with newly minted VC funds would have to be directed towards its new market.

I would not take issue with that decision, but it was always going to impact ongoing development of its then current products. I for one, fully understand that challenge.

But, I'm not sure I would have walked away from 1m existing customers; it would be have been easier and more fruitful to have published a technology roadmap and married it with an upgrade marketing strategy. The latter could have been a support/upgrade licence that retained the licence perpetuity of use for the base product, but extended the collaborative functionality through a cloud-based subscription.

It would have been easy to achieve both objectives and keep the underlying technology more in sync than it is. Now Xara has to faff-about building a separate release for Magix aka Pro v (whatever) at the same time as trying to advance into a new market.

With little effort, one could have transitioned to a single base product (including WD, WDP and Pro); existing users would have had the option to take up an annual support/ upgrade deal (preferential rates) and additionally subscribe to a cloud-based collaborative document management solution.

The objectives at the time were not mutually exclusive, and they're not even now.